But in order to shape him, she had to catch him. Not let him escape! She did everything to envelop him. Too much. Every day he escaped more. She had the discouraging impression that every day she knew him less. One thing she knew well: his body, his physical health, his illnesses, the least symptoms. She had an intuition that never deceived her. She would hold him before her, bathe him, touch him, care for him . . . this dear fragile body of the little hermaphrodite. He looked transparent. But what was inside him? She devoured him with her eyes and her hands; he was entirely at her mercy. "Heavens, how I love you, little monster! And do you love me?" "Yes, Mamma," he replied politely. But what was he thinking in his heart? At seven Marc had scarcely a feature of his family. In vain had Annette explored him, sought for some resemblance, tried to imagine one. . . . No, he was not like her, either in the shape of his forehead, or in his eyes, or in that swelling of the lips, so characteristic of the Rivières, and especially of Annette, as if the will, the inner ardor, had expanded them. The only point in common was the color of the iris, and this was lost in a strange world. . . . What world? . . . The father's? The Brissots'? Scarcely. At least, not yet. Jealously Annette said, "Never!" And yet would she have been so displeased to find some trace of Roger in her son's features? Would it not have given her an obscure pleasure? She remembered the man to whom she had given herself with a mixture of bitterness and unconfessed attraction--an attraction less for the real Roger than for him of whom she had dreamed. In fact, it was to this dream that she had given herself. If she had seen him again in the image of her son, she would have had a strange feeling of victory, the feeling that she had wrested from him this form she loved in order to animate it with her own soul. Yes, as long as Marc's spirit was like her own, she would have been glad to find Roger's features in him. But he resembled neither Roger nor herself. Roger's face, which lacked the original expression of the Rivières, had a simple, regular beauty of line: it was an easy book to read. But this child's face, the meaning of this expression . . . how describe it? It was so fleeting. . . . Pretty, delicate features, but not well proportioned, the narrow brow, the effeminate chin, eyes a little aslant, the nose--whose did it resemble, this long, tapering, finely arched nose?--and the wide, thin mouth with pale, slightly crooked lips? . . . Even when he was motionless he seemed to be moving; his air was uncertain and changing. . . . No doubt he was seeking for his form: he was still fluctuating, but in what direction would he decide to go? Or would he decide not to have any direction?